iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour 2015

'What do you want?
What do you want?
A Europe with its heart and borders closed to mercy
Or a Europe with it’s heart open...'

Zooropa made it's tour debut tonight, catching the breath of 15,000 Italians in Turin as the huge #U2ieTour screens carried poignant images of the global movement of refugees. The lyrics from the 1993 song could hardly have been more timely.

'And I have no compass
And I have no map
And I have no reasons
No reasons to get back...'

The first of 34 European dates, the show opened with The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) - one of seven tracks from Songs Of Innocence - and closed, 24 songs later, with Beautiful Day and One.

Here's some more snapshots.

'We're a band from the Northside of Dublin,' announced Bono after the opening number. 'We're called The U2'.

In truth, everybody seemed pretty familiar with the band already... who were more than happy to return to Italy. 'We're so excited to back here in the city of Turin where we've had so many extraordinary nights, it's been five years since we've been in this beautiful country. We missed you!'

With songs like Iris, Cedarwood Road, Song For Someone and Raised By Wolves - the first time they've been performed in Europe - the band couldn't stay in Italy. 'Excited as we are about our present location we would over the next few songs like to take you to a completely different one, also very special to us.
We're gonna take you to the northside of Dublin to the street I grew up on...the house I grew up in...because all of us are formed by our first experiences…our first love... our first fights in the playground...'

Angela came up on stage for Mysterious Ways and with a steady hand on the camera the show went global for anyone tuning in for the 'meerkat moment'.

Perhaps the stand-out moment of the night was a brand new sequence taking us from Every Breaking Wave to October to Zooropa, Bullet The Blue Sky and 'Streets' - with powerful news footage reflecting the C21st victims of conflict and the global refugee crisis.